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I havent seen that ohakea pic before, thanks for posting! Any idea what the plane is in the background? Did the kiwi Stangs have any variation in markings or paint from natural metal with roundels and the appropriate TAF checkerboard?

My info on the rnzaf planes is sorely lacking, even with the rnzaf ww2 pages on hobbyvista

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I havent seen that ohakea pic before, thanks for posting! Any idea what the plane is in the background? Did the kiwi Stangs have any variation in markings or paint from natural metal with roundels and the appropriate TAF checkerboard?

My info on the rnzaf planes is sorely lacking, even with the rnzaf ww2 pages on hobbyvista

thanks!

The P 51 at Ohakea is nice.

I'm not a 100% sure as the photo has been cropped, but

I believe the aircraft behind is a De Havilland Devon

To answer your question regarding the paint schemes,

In 1945 when the P 51's arrived in New Zealand they were

in standard USAAF scheme of the day with stencils etc

(being Natural Metal fuselage etc).

They were put in storage after the war till about

1950 when they were put into service with the TAF.

In the time from their arrival till their disbanding

the RNZAF P 51's wore natural metal through to High Speed Silver.

This photo gives you some idea of what High Speed Silver looks like albeit

a little less that the original lustre it has when fresh

Roundels varied also from immediate post war roundel/bar to straight

"D" type roundels in the 1950's

The RNZAF P 51's had their wheel wheels in Zinc Chromate yellow,

and as per the above P 51 at Ohakea some had their wheel doors repainted

Previous I had painted the flooring black over the "plywood" colour, and with an

old T-shirt and some light judicious rubbing gained a "slightly worn look"

The same was done to the seat to give it a "used" look

I decided to make a cushion for the seat, so took some 1.5mm styrene cut it to

shape, adding two pieces together, then covering in masking tape to simulate cloth, a coat

of Olive Drab and viola one cushion as seen on the seat

You will notice the top of the seat has a metal bracket to keep the pilots harness in place, I found this PE fret set, I'd forgotten I had it, so next step for the seat, to make up pilots harness and attach....

Moving to the aft of the fuselage I boxed in the tail wheel and added some strenghtening